The Nootka Sound region on Canada’s west coast is best known as the birthplace of British Columbia – a title referring to the pivotal role it played in the struggle between Spain and Britain over territorial control of the entire western coast of North America in the late 18th century. Today, the area is sparsely populated and characterized by its reliance on resource-based industries – forestry, fishing, and mining.
The challenge
The Nootka Sound communities of Tahsis, Zeballos, Gold River and Kyuquot felt that their modern day history was important, and worth preserving. They also wanted to foster community pride and strengthen what they saw as the region’s immense tourism potential.
Strategy and execution
Working with the local regional district and town councils, Whalebone Productions documented and recorded the region’s history through extensive interviews and archival research. Travelling by floatplane and boat, we visited remote, outlying Indian villages, explored underground mines, visited logging operations and fish hatcheries, and toured pulp mills and sawmills. We interviewed hundreds of people, from pioneers and old-timers to community leaders and the area’s current residents. Whalebone Productions produced a 90-minute video and an award-winning book, “Nootka Sound Explored,” written by Laurie Jones, the first regional history of the area. Using a rich blend of personal accounts, old photographs and written records, both the video and the book chronicle the development of the region, from the time of European contact to the present. They tell the story of the modern forestry communities of Tahsis, Zeballos, Gold River and Kyuquot, and their links to the past.
Results
Published by Ptarmigan Press, “Nootka Sound Explored” received the 1991 Writer’s Award from the British Columbia Historical Federation as the best community history, and was sold in bookstores and museums in British Columbia. The video was also sold through bookstores and museums as well as through town council offices. In addition, the Nootka Sound history project inspired each of the communities to start their own local historical societies and economic development organizations to help strengthen and revitalize the region’s sense of community.
Jones writes a must-have. Nootka Sound Explored is a well-organized, well-designed, large format book which surely deserves a place on the bookshelves of all homes, schools and libraries on Vancouver Island – and well beyond.”
Hilary Stewart, award-winning author
Campbell River Courier-IslanderIn many respects, Jones’s Nootka Sound Explored is a superior book, a model in the local history genre… It is well organized and clearly written, and presented in a handsome format with some useful maps and vivid and appropriate photographs… The pulling together into a cohesive unit of a wide range of diverse elements is not easily done, yet Jones does so in Nootka Sound Explored… This is a superior work in which the demanding problems of organization and writing and design have been admirably handled. Member societies thinking of publishing a local history would profit from a close study of Nootka Sound Explored.
George Newell
B.C. Historical News, Summer 1993Laurie Jones has written a fine history about a prominent section of Vancouver Island’s west coast… The book’s greatest strength is Jones’ use of oral history. It is here that she captures the essence of life on Vancouver Island’s west coast… The author has also found a nice sense of balance between the scholarly and the local history approaches, a symmetry not always easy to achieve… This book is a fascinating read, and will do justice to anyone’s bookshelf.
Bob Griffin, Curator of Modern History
Royal B.C. Museum
Discovery, Summer 1992